Barnes & Noble’s attitude towards the LCD reader has changed dramatically in the past few months. It initially sold the Nook Color as a mildly enhanced color reader but is now treating the device more as a specialized but genuine tablet. Without an official update, hobbyists have been hacking tablet-ready Android builds on to the device, but Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch now saw it as more of an official competitor to the iPad that would cover core features at $249, or half the $499 for Apple’s base model.

But the iOS device has a tremendous head start in the market over the enhanced Nook Color and BlackBerry Playbook. IPad 2 also has access to many more applications — about 65,000, compared to about 125 Nook apps so far.